Museum Parades The Hardware Of War

Side trips

May 9, 1993|By Tom Infield, Philadelphia Inquirer

ABERDEEN, MD. — If you've driven to Baltimore or Washington, you've seen the signs. I bet you have. They're dirt-brown, and they stand along the bustling flat stretch of Interstate 95 that passes over the Susquehanna River near where it empties into Chesapeake Bay.

''Ordnance Museum,'' Exit 85.

Most drivers, of course, zoom right by, some having no clue what an ordnance museum might be, and others knowing but not caring.

Maybe the signs should say, ''Tanks for the memories.'' For here sit rows and rows of old military tanks, lined up to fight the battles of World War II and Korea and other conflagrations of the past.

American Sherman tanks and German Tiger tanks. British Honey tanks and a mammoth Soviet Stalin tank. Italian tanks and French tanks.

So many tanks - and you're welcome. Free. Every day.

''We have the world's largest collection of armored fighting vehicles here,'' said W.F. Atwater, the museum director.

Situated about halfway between Philadelphia and Washington, the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum makes a fascinating stop on a journey through the I-95 corridor.

The museum sits at the northern edge of the 72,500-acre Aberdeen Proving Ground, an Army facility just down the road from Havre de Grace, which is at the head of the bay. You can get off I-95 and be at the museum in five minutes.

Each year, despite the rather uninspiring signs, 200,000 people find their way to the museum, which consists of a two-story building containing exhibits on ordnance, plus the 25-acre ''tank and artillery park.'' The park contains 225 tanks and artillery pieces.

Many who come to visit are active members of the Army assigned to the Proving Ground, where the weapons of the future are being tested. Many others are soldiers of the past who come to look again at the weapons once used by - and against - them.

My Webster's defines ''ordnance'' thusly: ''All military weapons, together with ammunition, combat vehicles, etc., and the equipment and supplies used in servicing them.''

I guess that must include the staff car that Gen. John J. ''Black Jack'' Pershing used to cruise around France in World War I - because it's here.

Inside the museum building is a glass case showing the development of shrapnel, which the exhibit says was invented in 1784 by Lt. Henry Shrapnel to ''fill the need for an effective projectile for use against troops in the open.'' In other words, to blow apart a lot of young men all at once.

Most of the Aberdeen Proving Ground is restricted to visitors. But you can drive onto the property and follow signs to the museum without being stopped. The entrance road, in fact, is the first exhibit. Along it you will see a ''mile of tanks'' - retired American tanks, some of them prototypes that were never put into production.

Clearly, tanks are the main attraction around here.

Anyone who has ever seen a World War II movie will recognize the German Panther tanks parked at the museum. Maybe also the famous Soviet tank of World War II, the T-34. The Panthers and T-34s clashed in some of the legendary tank battles of history. In one battle on the Eastern Front, at a place called Kursk, 6,000 tanks faced off in combat.

Now these old enemies sit side by side on the grass, their long barrels all pointed in the same direction. The array includes tanks from a half-dozen countries and times.

A sardine-can tank from World War I. A diminutive Japanese tank left on the battlefield at Okinawa. A Soviet-made tank captured in the Korean War. A Soviet T-55 captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

The museum even has a Soviet T-72 taken from the Iraqis in the Persian Gulf War, Atwater said, though it isn't yet on display.